Americans on Local Schools: "Show Us the Money"

by Steve Crabtree, Contributing Editor

If, as the song goes, "money makes the world go around," then a
significant number of Americans must think their local schools are
virtually standing still. One in five Americans (21%) say that lack
of financial support is the biggest problem facing their local
schools today, according to the 2004 Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of
the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools*.

But money is not the only problem. Americans mentioned
overcrowded schools and lack of discipline among students as the
No. 1 problem -- each cited by 10% of Americans -- as well as such
perennial concerns as drug use (7%) and violence (6%).

Every year, the PDK/Gallup survey asks Americans about the
biggest problems the public schools in their own communities are
dealing with. Although the percentage citing lack of funding has
dropped slightly since last year, it remains above 20% for the
third year in a row, after hovering between 10% and 15% during the
late 1990s.

Some of the increase in concern about school funding may be due
to the gradual diminishing of concern about fighting/violence/gangs
since the late 1990s, when the violent crime rate was higher in
many U.S. cities and there was a spate of deadly school
shootings.

In part, the public's elevated concern about school funding may
also be a reaction to budget crises that have forced state
legislatures to make cuts in almost every area over the last few
years, including education. A recent report by Education Trust, an
independent nonprofit organization, found that funding disparities
between poor and wealthy school districts have widened since 2000,
after narrowing in the boom period of the late 1990s. According to
the report, in 2002, high-poverty districts received $1,368 less
per student from state and local governments than did more affluent
districts. That gap is up from $1,287 in 2001 and $1,208 in
1997.

If state budget crunches are harder on schools in low-income
areas, it seems logical that less affluent Americans would be more
likely to see their local schools struggling with lack of funding.
However, that is not the case -- aggregated PDK/Gallup data from
the past three years reveal that respondents with household incomes
of $40,000 and more are actually more likely than
those earning less than $40,000 to name lack of financial support
as one of the biggest problems facing their schools. Among
lower-income people, funding ranks along with overcrowding and the
lack of discipline as the major problems. In the higher-income
categories, there is a larger gap between funding and other
problems.

That's not to say, however, that students in low-income areas
aren't disproportionately affected by insufficient school funding.
The Education Trust report contends that schools in
poverty-stricken areas need more resources to meet the same
standards, so even if all schools are squeezed equally, poorer
students are more likely to feel the effects.

In some cases, education advocates unable to make headway with
state legislators are taking their appeals directly to the public.
On Nov. 2, residents of Nevada, Oklahoma, and Washington will
decide on measures that could dramatically raise school funding
levels. However, in other states, such as Maine and Missouri,
voters are considering measures that would limit municipalities'
ability to levy property taxes, and therefore reduce the funds
available for schools.

Bottom Line

The issue of education funding has naturally been part of this
year's acrid political dialogue. John Kerry has accused President
George W. Bush of underfunding the current administration's No
Child Left Behind law, while Bush has pointed to the 49% increase
in federal funding for education during his presidency.

But PDK/Gallup data suggest that the public was growing
increasingly concerned about education funding long before the
political finger-pointing began. Challenging economic times have
forced Americans to consider their priorities -- and as many state
and local governments are discovering, education is a priority few
are willing to relinquish.

*The findings of the survey are based on telephone
interviews with a random sample of 1,003 U.S. adults, aged 18 and
older, conducted from May 28 to June 18, 2004. For results based on
this sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum error
attributable to sampling and other random effects is ±3
percentage points.

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